Mainstreaming Democratic Education
Background
The International Democratic Education community’s first formal engagement with the UN-led International Human Rights mechanisms was the IDEC 2023 Resolution on Compulsory Education. Although the resolution did not receive a response from the UN CRC, it led to a realization that Democratic Education was more aligned to International Human Rights law than presently mainstreamed systems of education.
Why do we need to mainstream democratic education?
Democratic forms of schooling are more than a century old, the IDEC community is more than 3 decades old, and yet Democratic Education is increasingly under threat everywhere – in some countries it is a battle to even stay legal, and even in countries where it is legal, it is treated with suspicion by authorities.
Rather than surviving precariously on the fringes of the system, serving a small number of children and inaccessible to the majority, Democratic Education needs to be mainstreamed.
What can we do?
Much of the “debate” on education is inconclusive because we don’t have a shared agreement on what the outcome and values of education should be. Except, actually, we do: International Human Rights Law articulates the aims of education and how it should be provided in order to respect human rights, by means of international treaties that the vast majority of countries have ratified into law. However, we need to be able to clearly and explicitly demonstrate that the practices in democratic education are aligned with Human Rights. This obliges states to endorse Democratic education – recognizing and supporting non-state schools explicitly established to be democratic, and introducing democratic practices to state schools.
How?
There are potentially many ways, but coming up with a “new idea” as people outside the political power system will be an uphill battle for acceptance. However, there is a proposal, already adopted by the UN General Assembly in the early 2000s, to establish a “Rights-based Quality Assurance Framework for schools” which would serve our purpose. When states have abdicated their responsibility to implement this, who better to action it than the community that is committed to democratic education based on human rights?
How does this relate to IDEC?
IDEC@EUDEC 2025 will host several workgroups to develop the Quality Assurance System, to ensure that it is aligned with the needs of the IDEC community. Details of this will be announced later.
In the meantime,
If you would like to join the group that will work virtually to prepare the workgroup sessions, email Sifaan Zavahir on sifaan@kinder.lk
Please Sign the Declaration of Child Rights-Centric Education, as it paves the way for the Quality Assurance System